To keep production lines moving, manufacturers require delivery of the right part to the right place at the right time and in the right quantity. In conventional production lines such as automotive assembly lines, parts are added or assembled to a partially assembled product as it passes by assembly stations or areas on the production line. Associates working on the production line install parts and complete assembly processes as may be required to build a product meeting a particular set of specifications. A production schedule usually determines which manufacturer products will be built on a particular day or other production period and therefore, dictates which parts or components are needed on the production line so associates can complete the installation and assembly tasks at the assembly stations or areas. If an associate at an assembly station does not have the right parts at the right time, accommodations to the production process must be made. The product may be held or diverted to another location while attempts are made to locate the appropriate parts. Production slows or worse, may be halted entirely, as time is spent locating the appropriate part or parts to complete the necessary installation and assembly tasks.
To facilitate delivery of parts to the production line, some manufacturers work with a logistics provider that manages inventories of parts at the manufacturing facility and uses a variety of delivery techniques transport parts from various inventory locations to production line locations when a need for replenishment is determined. For example, when the line side supply of a particular part at a particular location drops below a threshold, a replenishment method may be used in which an associate drives a vehicle loaded with the low inventory part to the particular production line location. Other manufacturers respond to replenishment requests using automated guided vehicles that deliver parts to assembly line locations based on directional information programmed into the vehicles.
Various right part, right place, right time (RPT) production methods have been developed to reduce costs attributable to maintaining replenishment inventories. RPT techniques involve coordinating the delivery of parts to the manufacturer's assembly plant as well as to “line side” locations in an effort to reduce inventory levels and, consequently, costs. Some manufacturers have incorporated parts consolidation centers into their RPT practices. Consolidation centers are facilities where parts are received from suppliers, staged for use in one or more assembly plants (i.e., organized according to the order in which they will be consumed), and then transported from the consolidation center to an assembly plant production line where they are consumed. In an effort to control costs, suppliers may be asked to deliver parts to the consolidation center in conjunction with the manufacturer's production schedule and to provide parts in full truck loads rather than partial truck loads.
Although delivering parts in full truck loads is more cost-effective than delivering them in partial truck loads, it also impacts consolidation center or warehouse logistics. More time and effort is required to unload a full loaded trailer than a partially loaded trailer. In addition, the consolidation center or warehouse must be able to at least temporarily store and track the parts that are unloaded but are not ready to be delivered line side. While a manufacturer may arrange to have parts delivered from suppliers to the consolidation center or warehouse according to specific production needs, the arrival of the trucks that deliver the trailers of parts may not necessarily coincide with the manufacturer's schedule. If a substantial number of trailers are used to supply parts for production, the logistics provider that operates the consolidation center or warehouse must have procedures in place for receiving the trailers and determining how and when they will be unloaded.
Ideally, the unloading of trailers corresponds to the manufacturer's production needs and therefore, the need for parts. Determining which trailers are needed and when, however, requires an analysis of production requirements and inventory as well as knowledge about the parts inventory that is available on the trailers at the consolidation center. Information needed for such an analysis is often stored in different computerized systems and the applications executing at the computerized systems do not support such an analysis. What is needed is an application that provides an integrated view of the data and that analyzes the data to determine a schedule for unloading parts from trailers. There is a need for a computerized system and method for parts delivery that aligns the process of unloading trailers with a manufacturer's production needs. There is also a need for a computerized system and method for parts delivery that defines a schedule for unloading trailers consistent with a manufacturer's production needs. There is a need for a computerized system and method for parts delivery that accounts for a manufacturer's demand for parts throughout a production period. There is a need for a computerized parts delivery management system and method that correlates the unloading of trailers with a production schedule to further the goal of delivering the right part to the right production line location at the right time.